n as women have done before, and since.

"But there was one, more gentle, more beautiful than all others of
the tribe. 'Be-be,' our people call her; it is the Chinook word for
'a kiss.' None of our people knew her real name; but it was a kiss
of hers that made this legend, so as 'Be-be' we speak of her.

"She was a mother-woman, but save for one beautiful girl-child, her
family of six were all boys, splendid, brave boys, too, but this
one treasured girl-child they called 'Morning-mist.' She was little
and frail and beautiful, like the clouds one sees at daybreak
circling about the mountain peaks. Her father and her brothers
loved her, but the heart of Be-be, her mother, seemed wrapped round
and about that misty-eyed child.

"'I love you,' the mother would say many times a day, as she caught
the girl-child in her arms. 'And I love you,' the girl-child would
answer, resting for a moment against the warm shoulder. 'Little
Flower,' the woman would murmur, 'thou art morning to me, thou art
golden mid-day, thou art slumbrous nightfall to my heart.'

"So these two loved and lived, mother and daughter, made for each
other, shaped into each other's lives as the moccasin is shaped to
the foot.

"Then came that long, shadowed, sunless day, when Be-be, returning
from many hours of ollallie picking, her basket filled to the brim
with rich fruit, her heart reaching forth to her home even before
her swift feet could traverse the trail, found her husband and
her boys stunned with a dreadful fear, searching with wild eyes,
hurrying feet, and grief-wrung hearts for her little 'Morning-child,'
who had wandered into the forest while her brothers played--the
forest which was deep and dark and dangerous,--and had not returned."

The Klootchman's voice ceased. For a long moment she gazed straight
before her, then looking at me said:

"You have heard the Falls of Lillooet weep?" I nodded.

"It is the weeping of that Indian mother, sobbing through the
centuries, that you hear." She uttered the words with a cadence
of grief in her voice.

"Hours, nights, days, they searched for the morning-child," she
continued. "And each moment of that unending agony to the
mother-woman is repeated to-day in the call, the wail, the
everlasting sobbing of the falls. At night the wolves howled up
the canyon. 'God of my fathers, keep safe my Morning-child' the
mother would implore. In the glare of day eagles poised, and
vultures wheeled above the fores